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The Amherst Embassy and British Discoveries in China Aberystwyth University 'A Great Turkish Policy' Dockter, Albert Published in: History DOI: 10.1111/1468-229X.12328 Publication date: 2017 Citation for published version (APA): Dockter, A. (2017). 'A Great Turkish Policy': Winston Churchill, the Ottoman Empire and the Origins of the Dardanelles Campaign. History, 102(349), 68-91. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-229X.12328 Document License CC BY General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the Aberystwyth Research Portal (the Institutional Repository) are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the Aberystwyth Research Portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the Aberystwyth Research Portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. tel: +44 1970 62 2400 email: [email protected] Download date: 24. Sep. 2021 ‘A Great Turkish Policy’: Winston Churchill, the Ottoman Empire and the Origins of the Dardanelles Campaign A. WARREN DOCKTER Aberystwyth University Abstract One of the most important players in British/Ottoman relations and the ultimate breakdown of those relations during the Edwardian period and war years was Winston Churchill. Diplomatic historians and Churchill biographers have focused on Churchill’s role in the attempted naval conquest of the Dardanelles, the unsuccessful Gallipoli campaign and Churchill’s wartime disdain for the Ottomans. In doing so, they tend to portray Churchill’s relationship with the Ottoman empire in a negative light, assuming that he, like much of the war cabinet, based his strategies and diplomacy on ideas of European superiority and oriental weakness. However, new archival evidence has come to light which paints a much more nuanced account of Churchill’s role in British/Ottoman diplomacy. Using these new sources such as Churchill’s personal correspondence with Ottoman leaders such as Djavid Bey and Enver Pasha, this article will explore Churchill’s relationship with the Ottoman empire and his role in shaping British/Ottoman diplomacy. Taking into account the history of Churchill’s opinions, attitudes and policies, this article will reveal that Churchill was initially supportive of an Anglo-Ottoman alliance, only to be thwarted by the First World War. It will demonstrate that Churchill’s support for an Ottoman alliance owed partially to his Victorian Tory background and to a greater extent, a fear of a pan-Islamic uprising. Ultimately this article will reveal that Churchill’s relationship with the Ottoman empire was far more complex than is typically thought and was built on a unique blend of Victorian orientalism, geopolitical strategy and personal sympathies. n January 1916, Winston Churchill settled in the trenches of the western front in near Ypres. He had been ejected from his position I of First Lord of the Admiralty in 1915 owing to the break down of relations between him and Jackie Fisher over the disastrous Dardanelles campaign which ultimately led to the resignation of both parties. Perhaps unconventionally, Churchill sought to redeem himself by joining a theatre of war, personally. Churchill wrote home to his wife from the western front and reflected on how he had come to such a position and on his relationship with Turkey. His official biographer, Martin Gilbert, has argued that Churchill had believed before the campaign that ‘Enver’s followers would abandon the German cause when confronted with so powerful a demonstration of British superiority, and that Enver himself C 2017 The Author. History C 2017 The Historical Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd A. WARREN DOCKTER 69 might perhaps take the lead in shaking Turkey from the German grip’.1 Remarkably, in his letter Churchill even proclaimed: ‘After the war I shall be friends with Enver and will make a great Turkish policy with him. Perhaps!’2 This seems like an extremely bizarre pronouncement from a man who had suffered such a loss to Turkish forces. However, it does illustrate that Churchill’s relationship with the Ottoman empire is far more nuanced and complex than he is typically given credit for. Many historians and biographers have tended to paint Churchill’s view of the Ottoman empire as very negative because they typically view the Dardanelles and Gallipoli campaign in a vacuum;3 though more recently, scholarship has included the aftermath of the First World War and the restructuring of the Middle East.4 This ignores the fact that Churchill reflected on the Ottoman empire and Turkey a great deal before the the First World War even started and his positions were often complex and at times contradictory. This article will examine the evolution of this relationship by examining Churchill’s early views of the Ottoman empire, and focusing on his correspondence and actions just prior to the outbreak of the First World War. It will further consider how Churchill’s view of the Ottoman empire affected his role in the design of the Dardanelles campaign. Winston Churchill, like his father Lord Randolph Churchill, came from a Conservative political background. Many in the Tory party approached the British relationship with the Ottoman empire in geostrategic terms. The Tory leader Benjamin Disraeli and many other Tories were committed to the structural integrity of the Ottoman empire as an ally against Russian Expansion in Asia and the Near East. Winston Churchill later described the Tory mood on the Eastern Question as ‘tremendous and inflexible’.5 Despite this atmosphere, Lord Randolph welcomed the sacrifice of Ottoman holdings in the Balkans and even reached out 1 Martin Gilbert (ed.), Winston S. Churchill, III (London, 1971) [hereafter WSC], p. 248. This refers to Enver Pasha. 2 Winston Churchill to Clementine Churchill, 28 Jan. 1916, M. Gilbert (ed.), Winston S. Churchill Companion, 5 vols (London, 1966-82) [hereafter WSC,C], III, pt 2, p. 1402 [hereafter WSC,C]. 3 Owing to the number of texts written on Churchill it is impossible to have an exhaustive list of those concerning his views of the Ottoman empire and Turkey. Churchill’s own biographer, Martin Gilbert, can be vague on Churchill’s relationship with Turkey. In his official biography, Gilbert regularly illustrates Churchill’s sympathetic view of Turkey especially during and after the First World War and several instances of this are cited below. However, in his book Churchill and the Jews (London, 2007) Gilbert says little more than ‘Churchill felt it was time to make a “clean sweep” of Turkey’ (p. 29). For examples of studies which show Churchill’s view of Turkey as extremely negative see William Manchester, The Last Lion Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory 1874–1932 (London, 1983), p. 470; David French, ‘The origins of the Dardanelles campaign reconsidered’, History, 68/223 (1983), pp. 210–24; David French, ‘The Dardanelles, Mecca and Kut: prestige as a factor in British eastern strategy 1914–1916’, War and Society, 5/1 (1987), pp. 45–61; Earl of Birkenhead, Churchill 1874–1922 (London, 1989), pp. 335–56; Clive Ponting, Churchill (London, 1994), p. 170. 4 See for instance, Norman Rose, Churchill an Unruly Giant (London, 1994), p. 162; Michael Makovsky, Churchill’s Promised Land (New Haven, 2007), pp. 89–96; Richard Toye, Lloyd George and Churchill: Rivals for Greatness (London, 2012), p. 233. However, these texts do not systematically examine Churchill’s relationship with the Ottoman empire prior to the First World War. 5 Winston Churchill, Lord Randolph Churchill, I (New York, 1906), p. 99. C 2017 The Author. History C 2017 The Historical Association and John Wiley & Sons Ltd 70 ‘A GREAT TURKISH POLICY’ to the Liberal, firebrand Charles Dilke, declaring that the aim of the British government should be ‘the complete freedom and independence of the Slav nationality, as opposed to any reconstruction of the Turkish Empire’.6 Lord Randolph’s rejection of the ‘Conservatives’ Turcophilia’ can also be seen in his letters to Lady Randolph Churchill.7 However, as Winston Churchill pointed out in his father’s biography, these views were entirely private. In the political friction between Conservatives and Liberals on the Eastern Question ‘Lord Randolph Churchill took no public part’ and it is only from his ‘private letters that we may learn how decided were his sympathies’.8 Perhaps this indicates that Churchill was not particularly committed one way or another. But a more convincing view might be that Churchill was simply using the Eastern Question to ‘sabotage his party’s stance’ and advance the standing of his Conservative splinter group, the ‘Fourth Party’.9 In any case, understanding Lord Randolph’s actual position is difficult because of his numerous contradictory and paradoxical positions on the matter. In an article in Fortnightly in 1883, Churchill praised the late Benjamin Disraeli’s policies on ‘imperial rule’ and ‘the great Eastern development of the empire’.10 While the full complexities of the Victorian politics surrounding Lord Randolph Churchill and the Eastern Question are beyond the scope of this article, it is clear how Winston Churchill understood
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